


The Woods Beyond Bookstore

by RainbowUnderpants



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bakery, Alternate Universe - Bookstore, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Flower Shop, Asexual Character, Asexual Thranduil, Barduil - Freeform, Barduil Secret Santa, Because they always are in my mind, Bisexual Bard - Freeform, M/M, Married Couple, barduil gift exchange, ofplanet-earth, that's how I'm writing it, unless it's specified otherwise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-10 20:44:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8938429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainbowUnderpants/pseuds/RainbowUnderpants
Summary: Thranduil had always loved books more then people. Running a bookstore should be the ideal job for him. Except of course that stores, successful ones anyway are full of people. Tauriel, his customer-distracter decides he should buy the failed soup and sandwich shop next door and turn it into a coffee shop because coffee attracts people. She does this of course because she knows it bothers him, she knows. 
Barduil Secret Santa - Coffee Shop AUBarduil Secret Santa gift for ofplanet_earth





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ofplanet_earth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofplanet_earth/gifts).



Thranduil had Tauriel to thank for how he met his husband, Bard. It was her that has suggested he buy soup and sandwich shop next door and turn it into a cafe for his bookstore, The Wood Beyond. He had suggested instead he buy it to tear it down and turn it into a another garden like he had with the little gift shop on the other side. Not that there was much left to tear down after the fire. 

The owner, if you could even call him that, had set his failed business on fire for the insurance money. Shoddy, and by-law skirting construction and the shop had gone up like Bonfire Night. Right next to a bookstore, seriously. The nerve of some people, no respect. Luckily there was very little damage the nearest wall and no damage to his books, but the bakery's wall had a hole burned clean through it. The baker didn't even notice, said he had though the ovens were running bit warm that day, bless his little idiot heart. Tauriel thought he wasn't even in his shop at the time but off snogging the florist. Honestly the whole neighbourhood had gone to the hipsters. 

Tauriel thought a coffee shop would go over very well with the hipsters. Coffee, tea and books are very retro these days. Coffee. Tea. Books. Retro. Honestly. 

After he'd subjected her to a much needed history lesson on books, tea and coffee although he knew she'd only called books and tea retro because she knows it bugs him to no end. 

"Hipsters, hipsters and their 'retro is the new nostalgia' " She said, heartlessly mocking him. 

"They're everywhere" he'd replied not even looking up from his book. "I could be one and you'd never suspect."

In the end she convinced him, if he bought the building nobody else could buy it instead, fail at business and then set it on fire for the insurance money. Plus if it didn't work out, he could burn it down himself and have that second garden anyway. Thranduil had compromised, he'd buy it but she was to over see it. He would put up with customers interrupting his reading time until she could find a suitable manager to run it and then she could return to save him from the people wanting the chat about the love triangle in the lasted space vampire series and the tiny children with their sticky fingers.  
Thranduil was a book-person, not a people-person. Unfortunately it was people-persons who bought books. 

Thranduil had Tauriel to thank for his husband, Bard. He certainly didn't have himself to thank at all. He'd toss out Bard's resume no less then ten times.  
He'd even began to think that Tauriel was fishing it out of the bin in an ill-conceived attempt to set him up with the man she'd called handsome, in a lumberjack hipster kind of way, not in a pretty collage professor hipster sort sort of way that he was. Honestly. Again she said it just to get under his skin. 

The next time Bard had come in to drop off his resume, Tauriel had interrupted him so that he could personally tell him to stop appling if he "honestly thought he was just going to work two months and quit, 'cause he had listed all those other jobs listed-oh he was a camp counsellor! That's like a lumberjack, I was right after all."

"That's not like a lumberjack at all", he replied putting down his book and preparing to walk the long walk next door and tell Bard the camp counsellor-lumberjack to go away. 

Of course, he'd ended up talking to him, and he'd explained he'd never left a job except to go onto another job with better pay, better hours or better benefits. He wasn't about to quit a job just because, not with three kids to feed. He had three kids, their mother was dead. Well gone, he'd said, but Thranduil knew what 'gone' meant said with that look. His wife and his son's mother was gone too. 

His son was off in America, with his boyfriend doing something with computers. That was a different sot of gone. He was not so gone that he couldn't be Skyped on the computer. "Hipsters" Tauriel had mouthed when she'd gotten a look at his son's boyfriend's beard. Honestly. 

Thranduil could sympathise with the single dad. Besides if it didn't work out and he quit, at least he would never apply again. 

That was years ago, and Bard had worked out very well for very well for The Reading Room Cafe. He was able to manage the place, freeing Tauriel up to protect him from the interrupting space vampire shippers and kleptomaniac kids. Bard had certainly worked out well for him personally. He'd even interrupting him with Earl Grey tea lattes with little leaves drawing in the steamed milk. 

"Hipster latte art, its the shortest craze of the current millennium," Bard had teased "The only art that's fit to drink."

"Honestly," Thranduil replied, putting down his book to take the cup "I have heard good things about your triangle sandwiches though."

"The secret is all in the triangle selection. They have to be Acute."

**Author's Note:**

> Elrond owns the bookstore. The Woods Beyond has been family owned and operated for hundreds of years. Of course everytime the an owner either doesn't have kids or doesn't have kids who want to run it, the owner will just pick a new owner to take over and adopt them. Elrond is retired (semi-retired), and prefers to spends his days reading in the side garden and socialising with all the neighbours. By this time the "family" owns a number of buildings in the town and rents them out. Thranduil jokes about turning all the lnd into a forest to surround the bookstore so that customers can't find him, but Elrond says then he couldn't afford it anymore. Thranduil was hired when he was a teenager when he was always looking in the window at the books. He thought it would be rude to stand in the shop and read the books he couldn't afford to buy.  
> Thranduil met his wife when she came into the shop. Elrond teases him because of course he'd met her there, he never leaves the shop. Thranduil says he hired Tauriel in part to protect him form the too-sociable customers. Bard was rejected repeatedly because he had too many jobs listed on his resume and Thranduil thought he was an unreliable worker. Turns out he's the most reliable worker you've ever had besides Tauriel. Bard now manages The Reading Room Cafe and now has more time to spend with his kids. Thranduil and Bard ended up dating, if you can call it that a while after he started working there and married a few years later.


End file.
